Steps and Exes Read online

  Friendship? Affection? Could that be possible? A friend in Celia Henry? Dorothy tried

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  Laura Kalpakian

  to mouth that word—or any other—faltered, couldn’t. Dorothy’s lips were open, but soundless as her own heart attacked her, as Celia Henry swept over her and caught Dorothy in the curl of her embrace, like the curl of a wave. Aegean blue, this wave, silken, inescapable, and for a moment Dorothy knew what Henry Westervelt must have felt like, as a force greater than himself drew him down down down into the sea, as Celia broke over Dorothy and drew her into a connection altogether new and rich and strange.

  Staff at Island Medical went to work on Dorothy Robbins like she was a bed they were stripping. They plugged her in and shouted shorthand commands at one another, forcibly untangled Dorothy’s hands from Celia’s as Dorothy cried out. But the staff pushed Celia out of the cubicle and closed the curtain. Celia stood there, stupidly rooted, not knowing what else to do, except murmur, “Deo Volente, don’t let her die,” over and over until an orderly thrust through the curtain Dorothy’s clothes, rolled up in the afghan Clara. He pointed Celia down the hall, to the door at the far end, the door with portholes, the waiting room. Under her breath, as she walked past pale walls, empty gurneys, under buzzing fluorescent lamps, she said over and over, “Deo Volente, don’t let Dorothy die.”

  Opening the door with portholes and walking into the waiting room, the Robbinses swam at Celia like a school of fish. Like those great old groupers, their sad eyes, half-lidded, their mouths open, shaping words that will not come, the Robbinses pulled Celia into currents she could not resist, in the depths and shallows of Calvin Klein for Men. Celia bobbed and floated till finally Eric anchored her, his head against her shoulder, weeping, thanking her for saving his mother’s life.

  Ned, freckled, corpulent, mopped his face and bald pate with 116

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  his handkerchief; the sons and all the sons’ spouses pressed their hankies and Kleenexes to their lips and noses, and as a family they thanked her for saving Dorothy’s life.

  “Dr. Aagard saved her life,” Celia protested, “I just…” It was hard, quite, to say what she had done. She had caught Dorothy when she fell. Then, in the mad cross-island dash, Eric at the wheel, Dr. Aagard in the backseat with Celia and Dorothy, Dorothy had refused to relinquish her hand, had held on to Celia. Even when Ned and Eric reached for her, reached out to her, Dorothy clung to Celia and the wild terrified look in Dorothy’s eyes implored Celia not to relinquish her. And so, Celia held Dorothy in a grip so insistent Celia could feel the pain in her own chest. Not until the medical staff pried open Dorothy’s fingers did they part, and at that parting Dorothy cried out, Maybe my floors didn’t need to be that clean!

  “What did they say when you left her?” the family beseeched Celia. “Did the doctors tell you anything at all?”

  “Did Dorothy say anything to you?” Ned implored. “What did Dorothy say?”

  Celia frowned. Paused. “She said maybe her floors didn’t need to be that clean.”

  “What?”

  It was a collective question, deservedly so because certainly Dorothy’s cry had also seemed to Celia one of the strangest possible things anyone could have said under life-threatening circumstances.

  “She said, maybe her floors didn’t need to be that clean,” Celia repeated to their still gape-mouthed incredulity. The Robbinses regarded Celia as though she had spoken in tongues, as though she had personally dealt them an axe blow to the base of the family tree.

  So Celia added, “Then she said how much she loves all of you, and you’re not to worry and she’ll be fine and she loves you.” This was a lie, beginning to end, Dorothy had said no such thing. But Celia felt better for having told the lie, just to see relief draped across every Robbins face, even Victoria’s.

  “Mom loves everyone too much,” Eric sobbed, “and it’s just like her to always think of others.”

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  The family retreated to chairs placed along the waiting room walls, chairs lined up church-fashion and bolted together before a TV set placed up high and raining down CNN. Island Medical Center was a small facility in Massacre (it could not possibly be called Massacre Hospital, could it?), one floor, two wings, better resembling an elementary school from the fifties. This waiting room had been last re-done in the early eighties and its once-blazing Southwest colors, peach and turquoise, had faded, splotched here and there in the Northwest damp. Framed prints on the wall looked like they had been cut from Kleenex boxes. Celia leafed through old People magazines and Sunset. She closed Sunset quickly, unable to bear all that implicit ambition, all that remodeling you could do in your spare time.

  Eric’s brothers and their wives were huddled each in separate little corners, cell phones pressed to their heads, and Celia realized she ought to call Henry’s House and check on things there. She hadn’t so much as a quarter, no purse at all. She was about to ask Victoria for money, but a single glance over to Victoria and Eric convinced her not to intrude. For all the public nature of this place, Victoria had somehow closeted herself with Eric, creating a space exclusive to themselves. With one hand on his knee and one on his back, Victoria talked in a low voice, a just-audible murmur for Eric alone. Celia remembered how Bobby used to do that with the girls when they were sick or hurt, sometimes just when they were angry.

  He would close the door and sit on the bed, hold that child, recite poems, sing songs, tell stories, his arms around her, his attention hers alone, his assurance calming, his love palpable.

  One of the Robbins brothers (Raymond? Roger? Robert?

  Celia—whose memory for names was legendary—struggled to separate them) offered her the use of his cell phone. Sunny picked up at Henry’s House, assuring her that she and Angie would oversee the cleanup and she was not to worry. Was there word on Dorothy?

  “Not yet,” Celia replied, with a glance round the waiting room.

  “We’re waiting for the doctor, but you better check that the beds are made up at Henry’s because it’s safe to

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  say, Sunny, we’re going to have people there tonight. Nine, I’d say.

  No one will be going anywhere till there’s word on Dorothy.”

  “When will that be?”

  Celia didn’t know. It seemed strange to her to be in this waiting room on such a dire errand. She thought of Island Medical more like a garage, a place where you’d bring something to get it fixed. And she often had brought kids who worked for her, her own kids, step-kids, and here they had broken bones set, burns salved, cuts or gashes stitched up, had tetanus shots and assorted vaccinations. It was a place where someone might be born, as Bethie and Victoria both were. It was not a place where someone might actually die.

  She took a seat beside Ned, offering her hand and such comfort as she could. Ned took her hand and began to weep, his shoulders shaking seismically. Celia said quickly, “Dr. Aagard called the cardiologist on his cell phone, so he was here when we arrived. I’m sure Dorothy will be fine, will get well.”

  Bursting into tears, mopping his face, Ned blamed himself.

  Dorothy had had heart trouble now for a long time and he blamed himself for not taking it more seriously, even though it was just a condition. “But you know, both her parents died of heart attacks and so did her best friend, Madcap Barb, five years ago, and she was devastated, really devastated by these deaths. It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have brought her. I should have seen this coming.”

  “You can’t blame yourself, Ned.”

  “But she didn’t even want to come to this stupid engagement party! I insisted. I said we had to go because of Henry Westervelt.”

  He wept the more.

  What the hell was he talking about? But Celia didn’t query, or ask him to clarify, just held his hand, listened, nodded as he told her all about Dorothy, their years together, their honeymoon in
Rome, their perfect marriage, their perfect home, their successful sons (Roland?

  Richard? Ralph?) and their successful daughters-in-law (Kathy?

  Kristi? Kelly?), their successful grandchildren, two 119

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  of whom were UW students, all UW alums, their family, their view of Lake Washington from their beautiful home, their boat, the 40-foot Tollycraft powerboat, Strumpet, how he loved Dorothy and couldn’t live without her.

  “You won’t have to,” Celia assured him over and over, wishing someone in the family would come and comfort Ned, but though they had put away their cell phones, Dorothy’s sons and daughters-in-law had picketed themselves off in couples, sharing their sorrows intimately, like a picnic lunch for two.

  At long last the cardiologist emerged through the portholed doors and called out their name and they all rose and moved toward him like he was a law of gravity.

  “Mrs. Robbins is out of immediate danger,” he began. Everyone sighed with relief and Eric began to cry again.

  “When can we move her to Seattle?” asked Ned.

  The doctor looked at him with some surprise and said Dorothy could not leave Isadora, not even to go to another hospital. “Not till her condition has stabilized.”

  “But she has to go to Swedish Hospital or University Hospital!”

  Ned protested. “She has to have Bellevue doctors.”

  With a show of concerned impartiality, the doctor listened to Ned for a bit, then he said in a peremptory fashion, “Out of the question.”

  “We can airlift her to Seattle. I can pay for it.”

  “It would do more harm than good. She’s out of danger for the moment, but she can’t be moved. Now, Mr. Robbins, you can go in and have a very few moments with her. She’s been given some sedatives and she’ll sleep. The rest of you, well, I guess we’ll see you tomorrow.”

  But he did not see them all the next day. After spending the night at Henry’s House, the sons and spouses, Victoria too, returned on a morning ferry. They all had jobs and homes and lives which could not be ignored, schedules already stretched thin, irate nannies, irate clients, irate assistants, irate supervisors. Their cell phones had been ringing off the hooks. If they’d had hooks. Only Eric and Ned remained on Isadora. On his cell phone Eric called 120

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  Microsoft and told them to limp by without him. “I’m not leaving this island till I can bring Mom home to Bellevue.”

  Eric hung up and turned to Celia sheepishly. “Can I stay? I mean, I didn’t ask. I don’t need to stay here, this beautiful place, Henry’s House. Just a sleeping bag on the floor, that would be fine.”

  At her own home Celia readied the other little room at the top of the stairs for the Robbins men. There was only one bed in it and Eric gave that up to his father and slept on a cot set up in the kitchen. He endeared himself to Celia by being generally very handy around the house. Especially her house—which, unlike the showcase Henry’s House, was unkempt, untidy. Things lounged about in a sort of congenial squalor. When he was not at the hospital, those days of Dorothy’s recovery, Eric borrowed a pair of Russell’s sweats and spent his time organizing the silver-ware drawer, cleaning out under the burners on the gas range, polishing all the copper. In looking for the copper cleaner, however, Eric discovered in the cupboard under the sink a small empire of mold, a place where the Damp had built itself its own little kingdom by the sea. When Celia came back, the smell of Clorox was dizzying but the mold was gone. Chagrined that Eric had gone under her sink at all, Celia told him please not to bother. “But how else could I repay your hospitality?” he asked.

  All in all, Celia could see why Victoria had married him.

  Ned was a different story. Ned whipped out his checkbook at every conceivable juncture. Celia declined, wondering how he could be continually so obtuse. Couldn’t he understand that Celia felt personally involved in Dorothy’s recovery? Catching her like that, Dorothy’s embrace on the ride to the hospital, the cryptic remark about the floors, the look in Dorothy’s eyes. “Please, Ned.” Celia laid a steadying hand on his arm. “Don’t even think about money, about paying me. After all, we’re all family, aren’t we?”

  Ned paled slightly at this, but he capped his Montblanc pen and put it in his pocket with pleased finality. He took the cup 121

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  of coffee she offered him and had a long, intense discussion with Russell about the stock market.

  So it was a considerable shock to Celia, a day or so later, as she walked down the corridor at Island Medical toward Dorothy Robbins’ room, daffodils in one hand and a gift box with a blue ribbon in the other, to see Ned burst out of Dorothy’s room and stalk down the hall, puffing like The Little Engine That Could. When his gaze fell on Celia, he flushed furiously and wagged his finger at her, hollering all the way down the hall, “I suppose you think this is funny!”

  “Funny ha ha?” asked Celia as he propelled past her. “Or funny peculiar?”

  But Ned refused to reply and, still barreling down the hall, nearly collided with a high-wheeled cart of used lunch trays, and yelled that he would not have it! No indeed, he would not!

  All the rooms at Island Medical were doubles, but Dorothy had hers to herself and Celia walked in on an unguarded moment between mother and son, Eric’s hand clutching Dorothy’s and Dorothy stroking his cheek. She stepped back out in the hall to give them privacy, but from the very tone of their voices, Celia could hear Dorothy soothing her son while Eric protested vehemently.

  When he came out of the room, into the hall, the young man who had been so warm, so sweet, so helpful walked past Celia with scarcely a word.

  All was not well in the world of Robbins, that much was clear.

  But when she entered the room, Celia was surprised to find Dorothy looking rather perky. Her skin was so fine and frail that blue veins showed at her temples, but her lips had lost that tight pucker of pain and her eyes were a serene blue. She was sitting up, all IVs removed from her arm. She smiled at Celia, and then busied herself smoothing out all the wrinkles on her bedsheet, so it lay nice and flat, an even, white band across her lap.

  Celia asked how Dorothy was feeling, bracing herself for the obligatory litany, knowing she would have to endure the charts, medications, EKGs and CAT scans, the whole opera of medical opinion. Celia was impatient, bored with illness, taking her own 122

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  good health for granted and everyone else’s besides. Unlike Bethie, who fell absolutely captive to anything sick, lost or forlorn, Celia would cross the street, cross town, cross Isadora for that matter to avoid having discussions with people recently obsessed with choles-terol, Pap smears, mammograms and all the other accoutrements of middle age. No thanks.

  So it came as considerable surprise to Celia when Dorothy scarcely alluded to health in general, or the heart attack in particular. She replied to Celia’s inquiry about how she was feeling with the single word fine, and went on to compliment Celia on raising such a lovely girl as Victoria and how glad she was Victoria and Eric were married and had brought their two families together.

  “I said more or less the same thing to Ned,” Celia replied, for lack of any better response, and wondering what the hell had set Ned off.

  “And your other daughter, the bride-to-be, such a vivacious girl, so, well, so luminous! And your other girl is a stunning beauty.”

  “Other girl?”

  “The one with the very short hair and the fatherless—the one with the little daughter.”

  “Oh, that’s Sunny, Bobby’s daughter by his first marriage.”

  “And where is Sunny’s mother?”

  Under the circumstances dead sounded terribly harsh. “Passed away,” said Celia, “long ago.”

  “Sit down, please.”

  She gave Celia one of those smiles associated always with the Girls’ Vice Principal: inscrutable, patronizing and correct. The smile of the Mrs. Digbys of the world. An i
njunction against spitting must surely follow, Celia thought, but she sat down, first passing to Dorothy the gift box with its big blue bow. “I brought you a present.”

  “You have done so much for me already, Celia. This is surely above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “No, no, you’re meant to have this. Really.”

  Celia smiled as she watched Dorothy undo the bow and with-123

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  draw from the box the silver bud vase, lifting it from the top of the folded afghan Clara. Celia, poised, ready for Dorothy to say, No, I couldn’t possibly, to blush, or flush with dismay, to try to explain how the vase came to be in her pocket at all. Celia was all ready to interrupt and assure Dorothy that things like the bud vase, she actually put in the drawers so people would take them, so they have some visible token. Dorothy shouldn’t feel the least embarrassed. Celia was ready to say, You must keep it before Dorothy even objected.